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Corpse God
The Corpse God (屍神殿 Kabane Shinden), later known as Polka Shinoyama (四乃山ポルカ Shinoyama Poruka), is the main protagonist of Dead Mount Death Play. As a human born with the Evil Eye, the Corpse God (not yet known as such) was sold to the necromancer Izliz Swordflail at the age of ten and studied Necromancy under her tutelage, eventually becoming an Undead himself. Though he wanted nothing more then to live a peaceful life, the Geldwood church spent a century wanting nothing more than to see him dead. To achieve the peaceful life he so desired, the Corpse God pursues the secret art of reincarnation with the intention of reincarnating as one of his fallen kinsmen. His spell works, but not as fully expected: rather than reincarnating as his kinsman, the Corpse God instead wakes in the corpse of the real Polka Shinoyama, freshly murdered in the Shinjuku ward of Tokyo, Japan. Despite having reincarnated in a wrong body and world, the Corpse God has concluded this is his best chance yet at having a peaceful life. With the real Polka's permission, he has assumed Polka's name and identity along with Polka's body. His real name is unknown, as it is unpronounceable in Japanese. Appearance In his early years as an undead being, Polka walked the earth as a humanoid skeleton of adult stature, wreathing himself in a long, light-colored cloak with a hood and capacious sleeves. Polka's final form as the Corpse God, a century after the empire falls, is unrecognizable from his humanoid skeleton of yore: the Corpse God is white and bestial, resembling Earth vertebrates in some respects but too different to be directly analogous to any one creature. The horns adorning his cranium are bullish, and his hands have opposable digits. However, while his axial skeleton has familiar paired ribs and his thoracic vertebral column familiar dorsal spines, he has three pairs of arms whose extraordinary length seem to compensate for the unusual caudal position of their (presumed) pectoral girdles; unusual, that is, when compared to those of hominids. Whatever lies below his lumbar vertebrae has been cloaked alternatively in cloth and shadow. It is also unclear to what extent his skeletal form is reflective of creatures unique to the Other World, and how much of it is the result of necromancy magic. The ventral side of his rib cage displays unusual armoured plates instead of the long, flat sternum typical to primates, behind which he keeps—kept—his true form: a human brain, contained in a chain-suspended jar; considering the comments of Shagrua and his comrades, the armored plate could have been a custom design on his part to better protect his true self. As the human "Polka Shinoyama," Polka has stayed true to the real Polka's hairstyle and fashion choices. The neck wound that ended the real Polka's life has been stitched shut, and is stark against his throat; in addition, a lock of Polka's bangs has turned black post-murder. Thus, any photographs or videos depicting Polka with an unblemished neck and white bangs is likely depicting the real Polka prior to the murder attempt. Polka's usual outfit consists of long trousers, a sleeveless double-layer top with a black-and-white hooded wrap over the white inner layer, and a simple cross necklace. When he needs to hide his neck scar, he wears a hooded jacket over a button-up top with its collar buttoned. His fortune-teller guise consists of a long v-necked robe, a headdress that covers his eyes, and an outer shawl with a hood he wears over the inner headdress. Personality Above all else, Polka desires a quiet and peaceful existence and will go to extreme lengths to protect that peace. However, while he operates outside of human values, he is not without values and moral limits of his own—foremost among them his extraordinarily soft spot for children and inclination to protect them. He may view human souls as 'toys' but, since toys make children smile, has decided to treat human lives as 'precious' and will use them or protect them as he sees fit. His protective instinct has undermined his ultimate goal of a peaceful life on at least one occasion, as seen when he rescues Misaki Sakimiya from Lemmings. Though Polka carries himself with a serious, confident air befitting of his true age, he is not without emotional expression. When he realizes he accidentally killed Misaki, he is visibly surprised and buries his face in his hands inn exasperation; when he is trying to pass himself off as the real Polka to Rozan Shinoyama, he smiles and chats away like a 'typical' teenage boy. His behavioral differences to the real Polka are notable enough that multiple Shinoyama family members have commented on it: where the real Polka is incredibly timid around women, 'our' Polka speaks to them without problems and is unaffected when he finds himself in compromising situations with them. At the same time, Takumi and Hosorogi have observed that merely being in a teenager's body has caused the Corpse God to regress to some degree. Izliz Swordflail, the Corpse God's necromancy master, regards the Corpse God as one who is an eternal boy at heart and believes him to have "almost no senses of independence," someone who "devotes all of himself to those he considers kin." She argues that this is why he does not mind shouldering blame for anything, and why he is incapable of showing restraint when the "place where he belongs" is disgraced.Dead Mount Death Play Manga: Chapter 33. Chronology 'In the Other World' The Corpse God (not yet known as such) is born to human parents in the Other World and lives with them for ten years until they sell him to the sorcerers of Byandy Empire on the Byandy Peninsula.Dead Mount Death Play Manga: Chapter 2. He soon meets Izliz Swordflail, who informs him that he is now property of the imperial army and that she will teach him in the ways of necromancy; sensing that he might resent serving an emperor he has never met, she adds that she will arrange a meeting between them for the next day.Dead Mount Death Play Manga: Chapter 10. At some point after the meeting, Izliz takes the Corpse God to a grad staircase and shows him a tapestry displaying a symbol she explains is the empire's crest. The emperor child himself—walks past the Corpse God to proudly declare he personally redesigned the crest once he ascended the throne, having decided his father's design was too dull. With a wide grin, he shows the Corpse God a paper with a crude drawing of the crest and a simplified version in its corner.Dead Mount Death Play Manga: Chapter 26. The Corpse God will go on to befriend the child emperor while studying necromancy under Izliz, and he begins using necromancy in a different manner to his master. He eventually becomes an imperial court sorcerer—one of only a few to be inducted on sheer ability—where he serves alongside his master and Romelka Rimelka, the second-highest ranking and seventh-highest ranking Byandy court sorcerers respectively; although it is unknown what rank he is at the time of induction, he will come to be regarded as the fourth-most-capable necromancer and, out of the few necromancers the empire has, take on the second-highest position.Dead Mount Death Play Volume 1, Episode 1. While a court sorcerer, the Corpse God is often deployed onto Byandy's battlefields to act in his capacity as a necromancer. Though he does not notice for some time, in acting as a necromancer he begins turning into the Undead himself; he also earns the moniker 'Corpse God' during this time. And while it is evident that the empire was in conflict, history does not yet have an answer for what exactly caused the empire downfall which took place over the course of a short one year period. Either at the beginning of the empire's one year downfall or sometime during it, the Corpse God wakes to the sound of shouts outside his room. Voices cry out that the army has been swallowed whole; that General Daryl and his unit have been carried away by the home-wrecker dragon; and that the annexed principalities are rebelling. The Corpse God dresses and is about to leave the room when Izliz stops him, explaining that the two of them would have already been dragged out to the front lines had she not erected a perception-jamming forcefield. She does not intend either of them to join the others in their self-destruction, and has already left their acquaintances to Romelka's protection; so saying, she asks the Corpse God if he is ready to be liberated from the empire and live as a free man.Dead Mount Death Play Manga: Chapter 31. The Corpse God strikes out into the world, unaware that he has been turning into the undead, in pursuit of nothing more than a quiet, peaceful existence. At some point he takes refuge in a cave, whereupon he realizes some hungry children have taken refuge there as well. He earns the friendship of the five children—three boys and two girls—by offering them a ribcage full of fruit, and they welcome him into their fold. They spend many years together in peaceful harmony, living off the land without incident; in time, as the eldest girl becomes a young woman, she and the Corpse God fall in love. These halcyon days come to an end when the group is happened upon by Geldwood soldiers, who believe the children to have been corrupted by a necromancer's companionship and thus "grant salvation" to them by killing them; with four of the children set ablaze and impaled on the Geldwood soldiers' spears, and with his lover dead in his arms, the Corpse God takes immediate revenge on the soldiers and for a hundred years after. The combination of the soldiers' screams and the Corpse God's dark magic turns the abandoned coal mine he is in into a "labyrinth of writhing dead," where he waits out the next many decades hoping someone able to kill him would arrive—as he is no longer capable of suicide. When rumors of the feats of Geldwood knight Sir Shagrua Lugrid the Calamity Crusher reach him, he begins to hope that Shagrua just might be capable of ending his life. In the meantime, the labyrinth continues to expand. Eventually there comes a day of reckoning: the Geldwood church sends at least one subjugation unit into the labyrinth to defeat the Corpse God. The Corpse God easily holds his own against Geldwood's men until Shagrau arrives to directly challenge him; during Shagrua's assault, he manages to shatter one of the Corpse God's armoured plates to reveal the Corpse God's true form. The Corpse God suggests that the two of them are similar in that they both take lives for fun, preparing a secret reincarnation spell as he talks; Shagrua charges forward to strike a killing blow, and as he strikes—the spell activates.Dead Mount Death Play Manga: Chapter 1. 'Reincarnation' To be added. Abilities To be added. References Category:Characters Category:Male Characters Category:Necromancers